


It's Quiet Company

by harlequinsequins



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-23
Updated: 2012-03-23
Packaged: 2017-11-02 09:54:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harlequinsequins/pseuds/harlequinsequins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The human heart can only hold so much, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Quiet Company

He's made a lifetime's worth of mistakes with Buddy. Buddy, who is everything pure and quiet and beautiful that Meyer never was. The little boy, who reaches for him, who says  _daddy_ with uncertainty, afraid to whisper lest it breaks between his teeth. Buddy, who calls for him when the monsters lurk through the current of his dreams and he can't outrun them.

_Father,  
Daddy,  
Tatenui._

It's usually Anna. She plays the role of both mother and father as if she were born for them, molding them until they're her own. She handles tantrums and colic and nightmares with ease. Meyer is the provider - feeds them, clothes them, the protection they don't know they need.

They both know what is expected from them. And yet when he is home, he overthrows her, commandeers her title. Over breakfast, he smiles at the too-big eyes that sift through Meyer's, nothing accusatory, just curiosity and question.  _Eat your kasha, boychik._ And he would, though Anna would have begged and pleaded and have nothing to show for her efforts but a blouse stained with  _kasha_  and frown lines framing her small mouth. There is a power that he has, an unspoken influence that their little one submits to without question. Anna knows she may never wield it. It is wholly Meyer's, a part of him – a tone in his voice that cannot be learned.

.

.

.

There is a week that passes where Buddy is bedridden with fever, and he returns late in the night. She's there, sitting at the table with her arms outstretched into unnatural angles. She's too tired to feel the strain.

Her voice is low and rough, exhausted of all strength -  _look in on Buddy, won't you?_

He shrugs out of the double-breasted jacket, unties the silk from around his neck. All traces of prestige gone from him, all notions of the outside world and his place in it shelved behind the cobwebs and the gathering dust. For a moment, at the door of his son's room, he attempts to slip into another suit, a cloth so simple and yet so strange against his skin.

There, that soft voice, uncertain.  _Daddy?_

It's no use. It doesn't fit. It itches and pulls and he doesn't know how to carry himself as the father like he carries the power. The blood on his hands betrays him. The bruises and scars and broken bones of the past make him feel old, tired, like he's been fighting this war for too long and there's nowhere safe for him to rest. He's filled himself up with too much of what he knows, too old to learn, too old to try.

He knows how to fight, how to take a life with just the pull of a trigger, how to think his way out of things. But he can't become accustomed to Anna's arms around him, to the strangeness of gray morning when he's wide awake with numbers and the smell of her perfume tangling together in his head. It's that feeling that that floods him when he walks through that door (the first thing he sees are Buddy's too-big eyes, dark and intelligent like his, and Anna cooking dinner with her bundled hair in curls and tangles) -  _cold_ , alien. Like falling headfirst into ice water.

There's no room for sons and wives. Just Charlie – he's gotten by with Charlie and it's enough for him.

The human heart can only hold so much, after all.

Buddy crawls into his lap. He feels the weakness in him, radiating with the fever out of pliant bones and hot see-through skin. The light of the lamp on the bedside table makes Buddy's dark eyes even darker, sweat-soaked hair cutting into the pale, bloodless face. Little hands clutch the strap of his suspenders. He doesn't say anything more. Only holds on to his father's shoulders. Meyer can hear the silent plea for him to stay.

It's not long before the short, labored breaths slip into their cadence. And when he's fallen asleep, he tucks the frail body back into its snare of pillows and sheets.

He reaches for the door when Buddy calls for him:

_Daddy, don't go._

Meyer pauses only a moment, then closes the door behind him in reply:

_If only I could stay._


End file.
